Re: [tied] "-L" past participle

Armenian does have infinitives in <-el>, e.g. <berel> 'to carry/to be carried', but what really resembles Slavic is the Classical Armenian use of _past participles_ in <-eal>, like <teseal> '(one) that has seen; having seen' or just 'seen', or <gnacHeal> 'gone'. As in Slavic, they could be used with a copula, and if the copula was dropped, the participle functioned as a preterite.

Greek has isolated and rather irregular deverbal adjectives in -(e)lo-, e.g. tupHlos 'blind', deilos 'timid' < *dwei-elo-, etc. The formation is no doubt IE, but its grammatical functionalisation took place only on a branch-specific basis.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: P&G

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 9:54 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] "-L" past participle

> Is the "-L" past participle suffix in Slavonic languages only > or has this grammatical morpheme cognates in any other branch? According to my notes it is also found in Armenian, but I'm suspicious. G W Campbell's "Bluebird Book of Languages for Children to collect on Holiday" (or whatever the title is) suggests that the -l- is an infinitive, and so participial forms such as those in -elis/-alis, and the so-called "future gerund" in -lu could simply be based on the infinitive. Anyone got better knowledge of Armenian?